Importing to Oscmax

[ptaylor2008]

I have a question about importing Category. Can you please give me a example for importing Hardware for all the fields in the import file please?

Does each individual entry go on a seperate line?

Under easy population where it saids Upload EP is for uploading all the files or just the inventory or categories? If so, how does it know if its the category, inventory file?

Thanks
Phil

I am using the current version of Oscmax and EasyPopulate and I am trying to figure out how to import the categories and inventory.

What is the requirements in order to upload the file? Can the file be in excel format or does the file have to be uploaded a a tab delimater file?

Can you please tell me all the steps to upload the categories and inventory to Oscmax?

Thanks
Phil

I am using the current version of Oscmax and Easy Populate and I am using linux to run the shopping cart.

I am trying to figure out how to install the categories and the inventory to Oscmax? There is no docs that explains how to do this?

1. Does the file have to be saved as tab delimeter or can it be saved as excel?

2. What is EP? Can you please explain what format the file has to be in?

3. How does oscmax know the differece between the category and when you upload the inventory to oscmax?

4. Can you please provide me with steps to upload the category and the inventory to oscmax?

5. Can you please provide me with example to import two categories test1 and test2?

6. One inventory item shirt, with the manfactor taylor and the price $11.95?


Thanks
Phil

[met00]

EP will create a category if one does not exist, then load the product into that category

1) tab delim MUST be used (easy, save the excel file as tab delimited)
2) EP is a program that will take each product line from a tab delineated file and, based on rules defined in EP load that line into your DB.
3) Each product in the input file has a category | sub-category list associated to the product. EP will insert the product into the correct category|sub-category if it exists, if it doesn't EP will build the portion of the category tree that doesn't exist and then insert the product.
4)
a) manually create 1 category and 1 product in it
b) use EP to download the tab delineated file
c) open that file on your PC in excel
d) add your products to that excel file in the correct format
e) save the file of products as teb delineated on your PC
f) use EP to upload the new file and import the products to the store

Note: in the image filename area, if you are putting your product images into a subdirectory of images (ie /images/products/) you should use "products/imagename.jpg" instead of the image name alone

5) see #4
6) see #4

EP can be your best friend. It also can be a PITA. Because osCMAX is very robust on what it can do with products you have to remember that EP is a SIMPLE tool. That it has limitations and that you can't fight those limitations. For instance, I uses it to do an initial population of 30,000 products. But then we have many of those products duplicated into multiple categories with "link" duplications, so I had to create a separate program that took a product model number and a categorytree for that product and created the soft-links for that product into the secondary categories.

In simple terms... EP will help you a great deal when you first load the store. If your store is very stock, it will even help you there too. If you use attributes, you can even get it to work there (although I have never really trusted it much beyond the simple uploads, because you are working with such volume I don't want to have to always backup and restore databases if it doesn't work the way I thought it would, so I just use it at it most simple, and I don't worry about backup and restore since at it's most basic it generally works well).

And yes, as a practice you should always backup the DB before you run any program on it that will make massive inserts/changes. That includes EP.

[ptaylor2008]

I tried using the example that came with the shopping cart but its not working. Can you please please give me example to import these two categories test1 and test2?

Thanks

[ptaylor2008]

I tried using the example that came with the shoping cart but its not working. Can you please give me a example to import the two categories test1 and test2?

Thanks
Phil

[met00]

examples don't cut the mustard...

Do what I told you to do.

put a product in a category, use EP to download it. then you knoe you have the right format - upload the same thing, make sure that ep uploaded it right... now you know EP works... then add another products,,, do another upload... verify that it added the new product to the same category... do another product in a new category in the spreadsheet... upload the spreadsheet, verify the new cat was created, verify the new product was added...

This is all really basic stuff...

[ptaylor2008]

Like I said before I was trying to create just a category file not a inventory and I used the example that came with the shopping cart and it did not work. Is the same methode used to import the category and import the inventory?

If so, can you please provide me with a example just for the category?

Thanks
Phil

Originally Posted by met00

examples don't cut the mustard...

Do what I told you to do.

put a product in a category, use EP to download it. then you knoe you have the right format - upload the same thing, make sure that ep uploaded it right... now you know EP works... then add another products,,, do another upload... verify that it added the new product to the same category... do another product in a new category in the spreadsheet... upload the spreadsheet, verify the new cat was created, verify the new product was added...

This is all really basic stuff...

[met00]

EP "populates" a store. I have never used it to only generate a category tree structure (why would you do that and NOT populate the store at the same time?)

[ptaylor2008]

I am still confused and I am trying to make a inventory file so I can import it. I thought each individual item goes on a seperate line

The example has product_name1 and product_name2 on the same line. Can you please provide me with a better example?

v_products_model v_products_image v_products_name_1 v_products_description_1 v_products_url_1 v_products_name_2 v_products_description_2 v_products_url_2 v_products_name_3 v_products_description_3 v_products_url_3 v_products_price v_products_weight v_date_avail v_date_added v_products_quantity v_attribute_options_id_1 v_attribute_options_name_1_1 v_attribute_options_name_1_2 v_attribute_options_name_1_3 v_attribute_values_id_1_1 v_attribute_values_name_1_1_1 v_attribute_values_name_1_1_2 v_attribute_values_name_1_1_3 v_attribute_values_price_1_1 v_manufacturers_name v_categories_name_1 v_categories_name_2 v_categories_name_3 v_categories_name_4 v_categories_name_5 v_categories_name_6 v_categories_name_7 v_tax_class_title v_status EOREOR

Originally Posted by met00

EP "populates" a store. I have never used it to only generate a category tree structure (why would you do that and NOT populate the store at the same time?)

[met00]

I'm at a loss...

did you create one category, place one product in it and then download the tab file from EP?

If so, then you will have a working example. EP will take that one product and put all the right fields in the right place and it should be self explanatory.

Now, I could show you my EP headers, but my store is so mod'ed at this point that it would be useless for me to do so. I mean you don't have v_products_msrp v_products_cost v_products_special_order v_products_oversize v_products_group and a whole set of other things that I put into each product in my database and have modified my version of EP to pull out and push in.

So, I am telling you again. Rather than post examples here, which are not going to work for you from my store. I told you HOW to get a single product out with EP and that will show you what gets populated and how. It will, by running it, provide a working example of a EP file that will work for your store.

Then take the next line of the file, create a product filling in all the fields that need to be filled in according to the line above it and upload the file using EP and verify that the new product was created. Do the first one in the same category, and if that works, then do one in a new category. and verify that EP is building the structure.

Please go back to message #2 items 4) and follow the simple instructions to get a working example of an EP file.

[ptaylor2008]

No, I am trying to create a import file so I can import the inventory not the category. There is v_products_name_1 and v_products_name_2 why? Does each individual item go on its own seperate line?

What is product _mode1?

Why just not tell what is wrong with this format. THe category does exist.

Test Prod testpic Test Product This is a test produt 13.99 0 4/16/2008 4/16/2008 999999 Taylor Associates Home Décor


Thanks
Phil

Originally Posted by met00

I'm at a loss...

did you create one category, place one product in it and then download the tab file from EP?

If so, then you will have a working example. EP will take that one product and put all the right fields in the right place and it should be self explanatory.

Now, I could show you my EP headers, but my store is so mod'ed at this point that it would be useless for me to do so. I mean you don't have v_products_msrp v_products_cost v_products_special_order v_products_oversize v_products_group and a whole set of other things that I put into each product in my database and have modified my version of EP to pull out and push in.

So, I am telling you again. Rather than post examples here, which are not going to work for you from my store. I told you HOW to get a single product out with EP and that will show you what gets populated and how. It will, by running it, provide a working example of a EP file that will work for your store.

Then take the next line of the file, create a product filling in all the fields that need to be filled in according to the line above it and upload the file using EP and verify that the new product was created. Do the first one in the same category, and if that works, then do one in a new category. and verify that EP is building the structure.

Please go back to message #2 items 4) and follow the simple instructions to get a working example of an EP file.